In Vino Veritas? Alcohol, response inhibition and lying

Aims: Despite the widespread belief that alcohol makes the truth come out more easily, we know very little on how alcohol impacts deception. Given that alcohol impairs response inhibition, and that response inhibition may be critically involved in deception, we expected that alcohol intake would hamper lying. Methods: In total, 104 volunteers were tested at a science festival, where they had the opportunity to drink alcohol. Stop-Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs) served as operationalization of response inhibition. Differences in error rates and reaction times (RTs) between lying and truth telling served as indicators of the cognitive cost of lying. Results: Higher blood alcohol concentration was related to longer SSRTs, but unrelated to the cognitive costs of lying. Conclusion: This study validates previous laboratory research on alcohol and response inhibition in a realistic drinking environment, yet failed to find an effect of alcohol on lying. Implications of these findings and for the role of response inhibition in lying are discussed

Integrated emotion-oriented care for older people with ID:Defining and understanding intervention components of a person-centred approach

An increase in descriptive evidence regarding person‐centered approaches for older people with intellectual disability (ID) is important, due to increased life expectancy and the present lack of sufficiently underpinned interventions. This is especially true of interventions designed to increase well‐being and quality of life. A specific Dutch example is the Integrated Emotion‐Oriented Care approach. Despite its status as a good practice, its effectiveness has not yet been proved, nor has descriptive evidence been made available. The primary aims of this qualitative study are to identify the intervention components, to provide demonstrative illustrations and to gain an in‐depth understanding of the use of these components in the day‐to‐day support of older people with ID. A content analysis of five key documents was carried out. Five semi‐structured interviews were then conducted with early adopters, followed by a concept mapping study with daily users. The final stage in the data collection process was a series of five focus‐group interviews with experts and experienced support staff. The five intervention components of Integrated Emotion‐Oriented Care for older people with ID have been systematically identified and described in detail in five narrative summaries drawn up in collaboration with early adopters, experts and experienced support staff. This study provides valuable insights that offer descriptive evidence for Integrated Emotion‐Oriented Care in the care for older people with ID. Both implications and possible opportunities for future research are discussed

Alcohol-induced retrograde facilitation renders witnesses of crime less suggestible to misinformation

RATIONALE: Research has shown that alcohol can have both detrimental and facilitating effects on memory: intoxication can lead to poor memory for information encoded after alcohol consumption (anterograde amnesia) and may improve memory for information encoded before consumption (retrograde facilitation). This study examined whether alcohol consumed after witnessing a crime can render individuals less vulnerable to misleading post-event information (misinformation). METHOD: Participants watched a simulated crime video. Thereafter, one third of participants expected and received alcohol (alcohol group), one third did not expect but received alcohol (reverse placebo), and one third did not expect nor receive alcohol (control). After alcohol consumption, participants were exposed to misinformation embedded in a written narrative about the crime. The following day, participants completed a cued-recall questionnaire about the event. RESULTS: Control participants were more likely to report misinformation compared to the alcohol and reverse placebo group. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that we may oversimplify the effect alcohol has on suggestibility and that sometimes alcohol can have beneficial effects on eyewitness memory by protecting against misleading post-event information

Forgetting having denied: The "amnesic" consequences of denial

The concept of denial has its roots in psychoanalysis. Denial has been assumed to be effective in blocking unwanted memories. In two experiments, we report that denial has unique consequences for remembering. In two experiments, participants viewed a video of a theft and half of the participants had to deny seeing certain details in the video whereas the other half had to tell the truth. One day later, all participants were given a source monitoring recognition or recall task. In these tasks, they were instructed to indicate (1) whether they could remember talking about certain details and (2) whether they could recollect seeing those details in the video. In both experiments, we found that denial made participants forget that they talked about these details while leaving memory for the video unaffected. This denial-induced forgetting was evident for both the source monitoring recognition and recall tests. Furthermore, when we asked participants after the experiment whether they could still not remember talking about these details, participants who had to deny were most likely to report that they forgot this. In contrast to a widely held belief, we show that denial does not impair memory for the experienced stimuli, but that it has a unique ability to undermine memory for what was talked about

Feigning amnesia undermines memory for a mock crime

Using scripts, previous studies by Christianson and co-workers have suggested that simulating amnesia undermines memory. Relying on a more realistic mock crime paradigm, the current study examined whether feigning amnesia has memory-undermining effects. After committing a mock crime, one group of participants (n = 21) was instructed to simulate amnesia for the event. Their performance on immediate free recall tests was compared to that of participants (n = 20) who were instructed to respond honestly during free recall. After one week, simulators, honestly responding controls, and a second control group (n=20) that had not undergone immediate memory testing after the pertinent event completed free recall tests. This time, all participants were instructed to per-form as well as they could. At the follow-up free recall test, both ex-simulators and controls who underwent the memory testing for the first time performed significantly worse than the honestly responding controls. Thus, the current study supports the idea that simulating amnesia in order to evade responsibility for a crime has detrimental effects on true memory of the crime. Our results also suggest that this effect can best be understood in terms of lack of rehearsal

The effects of alcohol on crime-related memories: a field study

This field study investigated to what extent memory of criminally relevant details is affected at (close to) zero (MBAC?=?0.00%), moderate (MBAC?=?0.06%), and high (MBAC?=?0.16%) levels of alcohol intoxication. Participants (N?=?76) were approached in bars and were invited to watch a mock crime from a perpetrator perspective. We also measured their blood alcohol concentration levels. After 35?days, when participants were sober, they underwent a free and cued recall task about the mock crime. Compared with sober controls, both moderately and highly intoxicated individuals were less complete when recollecting crime details, recalling up to 33% fewer correct details. Overall, intoxicated participants were less accurate during the cued recall task (i.e. they produced more errors) relative to sober participants. These accuracy effects were dose-dependent for cued recall of salient features. Implications for police interrogations of defendants are discussed. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd